


The Kid is Alright

by Shayvaalski



Series: The Kids Are Alright [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Kid Fic, Oh My God, Parentlock, Post Reichenbach, Series, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, moran family values, seb moran: minder of highly sensitive people, the kids are alright
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-09-05
Packaged: 2017-11-04 02:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski/pseuds/Shayvaalski
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It worries Sebastian, the way the O'Doyle boy shadows his daughter's footsteps on the way to and from school, apparently daily, but he's rather swiftly informed that Siobhan knows <i>exactly</i> what she's doing, and he'd better let her do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boxoftheskyking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxoftheskyking/gifts).



This is what everyone knows about Thomas O’Doyle, age ten: he has six sisters, is not overly bright, and his family keeps pigs, but not money. Even Sebastian knows this, even _Jim_ , the odd osmosis of small towns everywhere taking over, so that when Siobhan stops in front of a small farmhouse halfway between home and school, and says to the blond boy sitting on the steps, “Come _on,_ ” Seb knows the child as soon as he looks up. Tommy doesn’t look simple, thinks Seb; there is a kind of alertness around his eyes that suggests that when he knows a thing, he knows it thoroughly. 

And what he knows is Siobhan, clear as day. Seb runs his hand through his hair as Bhan, chin high, walks off without looking back and Tommy follows after. He stays two of her steps behind, in back of her right elbow, glancing only once in Seb’s direction before focusing entirely on the tiny dark girl in front of him.

This is going to be a problem.

There are signs already that Siobhan is taking after her mum in ways that promise to become more pronounced as she grows older, and not less. The quick sideways roll of her head when something worries her. The way she crouches in the garden, still as stone, and watches rabbits wander all unknowing into the snares Seb has set, and examines the small lifeless bodies with detached interest; Jim has decided they will use them to teach her how to skin in another month or two. (Let’s let her adjust a little more before we put a knife in her hands, baby, Jim had said in a moment of uncharacteristic sobriety, watching her cleaning the smallest pieces of Seb’s rifle, solemn and intent. There’s plenty of time.) The three times he’s had to drop to one knee, catch and hold her against his chest, feeling her rapid heartbeat against him and the enraged hiss of her breath. 

His daughter frightens him, sometimes, with her smile like a cold-blooded beast, but Sebastian loves her like he does not even love Jim. 

 

When he walks down to Dalkey to pick Siobhan up from the primary school, because Jim had disappeared very early this morning on some unknown errand, she’s standing with the O’Doyle boy just outside the gates. Or—no. _He_ is standing with _her_. Seb, accustomed to sweeping a room and categorizing power dynamics, determining who is in control and which target would be best to take out first, can see the slight turn of Siobhan’s body away from him, mostly ignoring but tolerating his presence, and note the cant of his shoulders and hip towards her. 

Sebastian spares a moment to wonder, as he walks the last half block, what Siobhan has not been telling him, what Jim has not bothered to mention, because this looks like habit. There is none of the wild-animal tenseness he saw in his daughter in the days after she came home to them, all anxiety and small shudders, hands clenching and relaxing until things settled and became routine. There’s a flash of it now, when Siobhan sees dad instead of mum coming down the lane towards her, even though they went through it already this morning , and Seb sighs a little, gets ready to walk home with her hand firmly held in his. He’s a tall man, and Siobhan at eight is still tiny, and it’s not comfortable or pleasant for _either_ of them, and then the O’Doyle boy takes a step forward to pick up his bag and her head snaps around to follow the movement. She fixes him with what Seb suspects is the same kind of filthy look Jim occasionally throws towards Sebastian when he’s being particularly dense, and the boy backs up, unperturbed. Siobhan keeps her eyes on him for another heartbeat then shrugs, turns away again.

Sebastian needs to talk to Jim. Now. Preferably sooner.

“You walked with us earlier, didn’t you?” says Seb, taking the satchel Siobhan hands to him and slinging it up over one shoulder. He keeps his voice light, because there’s no reason, none at all, to make anybody nervous, and the O’Doyle boy puts his hands in his pocket and glances over at Siobhan as if for permission. Hell. Oh, hell, this is bad. His daughter sighs deeply and starts down the road ahead of them as the boy hesitates, then looks Seb squarely in the eye. 

“Yes, sir. I live just down Dalkey way from you and Mr. Moran and Siobhan.” He holds out a hand. The child is _painfully_ polite; Seb takes in farmers’ callouses on his palm, clothes clean but mended and a touch too small for him, and it matches what he knows about the family. “Tommy O’Doyle. Sir.”

Seb shakes his hand, at a loss, and they start after Siobhan, who is standing and scowling, thin arms crossed, at the intersection of the main road and the lane back to their house. Tommy gets to the small girl first, bends his head to catch whatever it is she hisses out between her teeth, honey-blond hair falling into blue eyes that stay fixed on her. Seb feels something like fear settle into the pit of his stomach. Siobhan already has the marks of a girl who will grow into an appallingly pretty young woman, her mum’s delicate bones and slender build suiting her better than they’ve ever suited Jim, but it’s too soon, it’s much too soon for Seb to be so afraid of what will happen to the first boy whose eye she catches. Of what will happen to Tommy.

The two small figures are a few meters ahead of him, silent and moving almost exactly in step despite the fact that the boy is already at least four inches taller and long in the leg, the girl’s head turning occasionally to say a word or three to him, never anything more.

Seb is aware of his hand curling harder than it really needs to around the strap of Siobhan’s satchel, and he hopes that Jim is home.

 

“How long?”

A stretch of skin and cloth beside him on the couch, faint trace of a giggle. “Why _baby_ , shouldn’t you know that by now?”

“Don’t, Jim.”

Silence, indrawn breath, considering tilt.

“Going on three weeks. Walks with us every morning and afternoon. He’s _such_ a nice boy, Sebby, don’t you think?”

Hand against a thin neck, two bodies gone very still in front of the telly.

“Bad road, boss. You can’t do things like that here.”

“Get off me.”

“Behave.”

A scuffle, short, ending with the familiar thud of hip against the floor, crack of head meeting a table leg.

“Tell her to drop him, Jim, I don’t need the whole damn gardaí down on us when she goes off the kid, and you know she fuckin’ will.” 

“You have the wrong end of the stick, _Bastian_. Let me up. _Now_.”

Hesitation, then movement, a surge upwards, thin mouth curling into a satisfied smile.

“So bloody well spell it out.”

“Mm. In good time.”

_“Jim_. As you keep fuckin’ telling me, she’s mine too, and if some poor boy’s smitten with her then damage control is _my damn problem_ , you can’t just—”

“I didn’t.”

Back of the hand to mouth, checking for blood; stilled there, eyes gray-green and cautious, taking in twist of neck and slant of hip.

“Bullshit.”

“Language.”

“Bull fucking _shit_ you didn’t.”

“Tell me, Sebastian, do you want to explain to our daughter why you woke her up to apologize for using profanity where she can hear, or shall I?”

“She’s asleep. Don’t you bloody dare change the subject.”

Four heartbeats, then five, then a long hiss of breath, the shift of expensive slacks against the carpet.

“You wouldn’t understand, tiger. Just trust me.”

“I wouldn’t _understand_ —!”

“Leave it.”

“Jim—” 

“Bastian, this is your last warning. Siobhan knows what she’s doing and you will _let her do it._ Is that clear?”

Silence.

“Moran.”

“Clear as fuckin’ crystal.”

“What I like to _hear,_ baby. Come here.”

A moment of resistance, of struggle, and then thin hands tangle into blond hair, gentle and possessive. The mood shifts, overlaid; a back of the throat hum, a low laugh.

“Good _boy_.”

 

After that he sees Tommy more, standing quietly by the back steps while Siobhan finishes her lunch on the weekends, trailing after her while she checks Sebastian’s line of snares and traps, listening as she expounds, in extravagant detail, on all the varied and numerous ways in which his maths homework is completely wrong. He follows her home after school most days, and Seb begins to get used to him always being there, a quiet blond presence balancing out his daughter’s sharpness. 

A month after the afternoon he walks home from Dalkey with Siobhan and Tommy, Sebastian gets back late, shoving open the door to the kitchen to find Jim totally immersed in something that involves wires and circuit boards and computer chips spread out over the table. Seb touches the nape of his neck, softly, and when Jim makes the _do you want to lose an inch of skin off that hand_ noise he shrugs and goes down the hall to check on Siobhan. 

She is curled in a small crescent precisely in the middle of her bed, face solemn even in sleep, and Seb feels his heart contract, just a little, looking at her. There are days, still, when he is sure that no idea is worse than this one, raising up a child with Jim, trying to be something that looks like a family, but she is beautiful and tiny and she’s his little girl. Sebastian pinches the bridge of his nose. He’s tired, and he’s about to leave her in peace and try to coax Jim to lie down when a there’s a movement from the armchair in the corner of the room. Seb whirls, instantly on guard, and his hand is going for a gun that he isn’t holding when a tousled head lifts and Tommy says, in a voice blurred with sleep, “Mr. Moran?”

Fuck.

“Hey, Tommy,” he says, quietly, and the boy blinks once, yawns. Sebastian crosses the room, leans down, picks him up. By the time Seb settles him on the couch in the living room and covers him with a blanket, he’s asleep again. 

“I didn’t want to wake him. He looked so _peaceful_ , all curled up.” Jim is standing in the doorway, rubbing his unshaven chin with a distasteful look on his face. 

“Do his parents know where he is?” Seb keeps his voice low, and they move towards the bedroom together. Jim snorts. 

“Don’t be simple. Of course not. Do you think they _care?”_

“He _is_ theirs, Jim.”

“He’s Siobhan’s.”

There’s a tense sort of silence for several heartbeats, and then Sebastian sighs, pulls off his shirt and trousers, and climbs into bed, because he’s right. Of course he’s right. 

This is going to be a problem.


	2. What About The Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heartbeat, two, three, the O'Doyle boy standing just inside the doorway, calm steady eyes sweeping the room, and if he knew what was good for him he'd turn around and go right now, and Jim shifts in his chair, keeps typing.

Interrupted, Jim breaks fingers. Seb learns quickly, a dull crack, a long indrawn hiss of breath, Jim not even looking up to follow his retreat. After that, the front room is Jim’s territory for eight hours a day, from when the sun drops to the bottom of the western wall to the moment that it gleams against his hands on the keys. 

 

In Dalkey Jim is a writer, and so he writes, single-minded.

 

Occasionally he will blink and sigh and look up to find Siobhan watching him, quiet-eyed, from the couch. His daughter knows how to be not just silent but still as a lizard in the cold, motionless in a way not even her father (who Jim has seen lie without moving but for his shallow breath on a rooftop for hours, in blazing sun and while snow frosted his back, waiting, _waiting_ , until he made his kill or Jim laughed and told him there was no one to shoot) can manage. Siobhan is young enough, still, to be little more than a shadow, a reflection, dark of hair and eye and mouth. 

 

Sometimes Siobhan reads, flicking pages in a regular fashion, small dead-wood noise, and sometimes she sprawls in the sunlight, ectothermic, thin ribs rising and falling in a deep and dreamless sleep—Jim knows, from experience, that Siobhan does not dream like ordinary people dream, although once a low, animal snarl pulls him out of _and then she ducked and held her breath_ to the sight of Siobhan blinking herself awake with the sound still jagged on her lips; he drops a hand to his side and she presses her head up into it, and he can feel her shuddering as his blood cools in her veins, and they say nothing to Sebastian.

 

Sebastian sends her in when he wants to make sure Jim's eaten, when he notices that there have been no explosions all morning, when dinner's on the table or (once in a while) when Seb wakes up in the morning and finds that the other side of the bed is cool and empty and unrumpled. Siobhan has a way of sliding up behind him and curling her hands around the back of his chair, not quite touching, and she will wait—unhurried—for Jim to lean back until his shoulderblades brush her knuckles, permission for her to say, softly, “Dad wants you.”

 

(The first time, when Siobhan had not even been in the house for two months yet, Jim had looked up to find Sebastian frozen in the doorway, thumb running over his half-healed pinky. His eyes were fixed on Siobhan, leaning up against Jim's hip, and on Jim's hand soft against her narrow back.

 

“She's safe, Sebby,” he said, and there was no belief in Sebastian's face but he stayed silent, left them together. Siobhan was Jim’s girl already, even then.)

 

*****

 

“Mum?”

 

One of Siobhan's hands touches the back of Jim's neck, feather-light; he wonders briefly how long she's been standing there, patient and still, how many times she’s said his name. Her weight shifts, just a little awkwardly; Siobhan is growing and uncomfortable with it.

 

“Need me to go?”

 

Jim breathes, blinks, leans back into the press of her fingers. “No, pet, you're _fine_. Dinner?”

 

“Yeah.” A laugh, high and shimmering: his laugh. “Dad says you'll eat it cold and like it if you don't move your skinny fuckin' arse.”

 

“His words?”

 

“Just so.”

 

Jim takes a kind of pleasure in how her imitation of her dad is almost perfect, and a kind of distant interest in what is missing from it. Sebastian is warm and round; Siobhan is almost managing oval, the timbre of the curses a little too flat, and Jim wants to sit her down and correct her, work with her patiently until the corners of their eyes are sparking with lack of sleep and she can fool anyone, just anyone.

 

He is, however, going to have a _conversation_ with Seb about his language. 

 

Siobhan's fingers shift against his spine, questioning, and Jim hisses, long and slow and restless, and follows her in to dinner.

 

*****

 

“Sir? Is Siobhan around?”

 

Jim can hear the voices murmuring through the wall but ignores them as irrelevant; the boy’s is just on the edge of breaking at fifteen, Seb's a low familiar baritone. He cracks his jaw, then his neck and sternum, and slides his fingers across the keys. Word press against his eyesockets, lean outwards on his temples, and Jim groans and twists and hunches down to type.

 

“In the sitting room.”

 

There's a faint noise, Sebastian setting a pan on the stove, turning to pull down a bowl from the top shelf. He puts it out of his head, hands flying, breathing in plot and counterplot. Part of him registers that Siobhan is on her stomach beneath the couch, out of direct sunlight and breathing shallowly, forehead resting on folded hands. Jim could feel her vibrating with something indefinable and overwhelming when she came in, silent—he'd offered up, wordless, his own familiar moments of stillness and mania, without looking at her and Siobhan had nodded, and she's been lying there for an hour or more now, taking breath after breath, learning the taste and shape of control.

 

Every time she shifts, or her fingers twine around themselves, Jim can feel it.

 

The door knocks open and both of them flinch but neither of them glance around (no need, only the boy hits doors like that, Seb's never been careless and he’s grown even less so with age and raising a daughter), Jim with his fingers on the keys and Siobhan with the upward curve of her spine just brushing the bottom of the couch. A heartbeat, two, three, the O'Doyle boy standing just inside the doorway, calm steady eyes sweeping the room, and if he knew what was _good_ for him he'd turn around and go right now, and Jim shifts in his chair, keeps typing, _She turned, and faced her pursuer, one hand upraised, and cried out, Let this pass from me, and he laughed and swung—_

 

“Mr. Moran?”

 

The boy is so much closer, suddenly, just within arms reach, and Jim groans somewhere just beneath hearing and does not see him because he _can not be this right now_ , and then there is a _hand_ on the back of his chair and everything spikes into color and noise and fury. One moment he is crouched over the keyboard, Jimmy Moran from upcountry somewhere, and the next he is James Moriarty, snarl and hiss and flicker, the chair cracking against the ground.

 

Tommy starts back, eyes a wide and startling blue that makes everything worse, too bright and clean and _obvious_ , a shade too close to fear (Seb has never been this close to frightened of Jim, never in ten years) and what use is he, this child, if he cannot even stand within five feet of Jim without flinching? What use to Siobhan? Better to make an end of him, here, now, before he can fail in some more tangible way.

 

The boy is not backing up (he should be backing up, does he not _understand_ how things go) but edging sideways towards _his daughter_ , mouth just starting to shape Sebastian's name, tongue cupping up against his soft palate, lips curled up and back, the hiss of an S, and Jim lunges over the fallen chair, _roaring_ —

 

—and Siobhan catches one wrist, calm, and says, “No, mum.” The shout dies on Tommy's lips; his eyes go to hers. Jim is very still, suddenly, every electric nerve in his body absolutely focused on his daughter's thin fingers loosely curled against his skin, not really a threat but a promise. They squeeze, minutely. Tommy breathes out. None of them move.

 

“Mum,” she says again, a little softer. Siobhan tightens and twists in emphasis, then reaches back without taking her eyes from Jim's to lay her free palm against Tommy's breastbone. _This one—mine,_ the gesture says, and Jim pulls in a long, slow breath. Brown eyes go dark, pupils wide, and Siobhan shifts her weight, promise easing closer to threat with every second that passes. Jim's tongue flicks out. Siobhan's mouth begins to curl into something that is not a smile. She is not, in this instant, a thirteen year old girl; neither is she a Moran. Tommy's chest rises and falls beneath her fingers, three times; and then he says, evenly, “Saoiste _._ ”Her head swings around.

 

Jim's eyebrows go up. Siobhan’s fingers tighten fractionally, thumb pressing against the pale scars on the underside of his wrist, casual, intimate. Tommy’s eyes follow every tiny motion she makes, and when Jim pulls back a little against her he moves, presses forward into her hand, just barely half a step, tense and alert to the threat Jim in this moment presents and ah. That’s familiar. 

 

Why is that familiar.

 

_Saoiste_ , he said, and she is still looking at him. Jim hates Gaelic, can read it but nothing else, stops listening whenever he hears Tommy start up the low murmur of it he uses to calm Siobhan, hates the way the sounds don’t fit the letters and the taste of it in his mouth and so it takes a long moment for him to break the word down into syllables so he can see it written in English behind his eyes.

 

Shesta. Foreman. Boss. _Well._

 

His daughter’s eyes flick back to him. Tommy’s have never left his face, and Jim notices without surprise that the fingers of his right hand are brushing his pocket, where he knows the boy keeps a knife. Not that he would dare. He’s very young yet, and it took Sebastian years before he’d pull a gun in an unsure situation without Jim’s explicit permission. 

 

_Well?_ say the half-lowered lids of Siobhan's eyes, the cant of her hips, the possessive curl of her fingers against Tommy’s chest. 

 

“Yes,” says Jim. “Yes, pet, alright.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the title is from The Who's _Tommy_. Shut up.

**Author's Note:**

> More about Tommy can be found in "Family Business", an ongoing fic that's also part of the Running in the Family collection.
> 
> Also, for those who are following along in the roughly-accurate to canon Running in the Family playlist, we're at "My Boy Builds Coffins", or thereabouts.


End file.
